An Acoustic and Perceptual Study of Interconsonantal Short Vowel Deletion in First Syllables of Najdi Arabic

Abstract

The process of short vowel deletion in open syllables word initially is attested in many Arabic dialects, such as Moroccan Arabic (Shaw et al., 2009), Omani Arabic (Al-Balushi, 2016), Jordanian Arabic (Bani-Yasin & Owens, 1987), San’ani Arabic (Watson, 2002), and Najdi Arabic (Ingham, 1994). The constraints that have been discussed so far which account for this deletion are attributed to stress (Bobaker, 2019; Watson, 2011) and syllable structure (Broselow, 2018; Kiparsky, 2003). It is widely agreed that short vowels are deleted in unstressed open syllables where the deletion does not result in a sequence of more than two consonants (Bani-Yasin & Owens, 1987). Few studies, if any, have examined the impact of the phonological features of the neighbouring consonants on this deletion. This thesis aimed to fill up this knowledge gap by exploring the effect of the phonological features on the deletion of short vowels in first syllables in Najdi Arabic from production and perception perspectives. Forty-five Najdi Arabic native speakers (31 females, 14 males) were recruited to do three production tasks: diapix, reading, and shadowing tasks to elicit various phonetic data that reflected different speech styles. The production data was acoustically analysed to confirm the deletion process. In addition, sixty-five Najdi Arabic native listeners (38 females, 27 males) were recruited to conduct an AX discrimination task, whereby listeners were asked to perceptually discriminate between two versions of the same word; one version with a vowel-presence and another with a vowel-absence. Both production and perception datasets were statistically analysed using mixed-effects logistic regression models to examine the effects of the phonological contexts on the deletion process. Results of the production data showed that male speakers significantly deleted first-syllable vowels more than female speakers and vowels were more likely to be deleted following a dorsal obstruent than a coronal one. The result of the perception experiment revealed that listeners’ perception was affected by three phonological factors. Listeners were more likely to detect vowel deletion following a dorsal obstruent more than those following a coronal one. Listeners were more likely to perceive vowel deletion in a front-to-back order more than those in a back-to front order. Lastly, front vowel deletion was more likely to be perceived than back vowel deletion. The manner of articulation of the obstruents did not play a role in the production tasks nor the perception task, short vowels were deleted in first syllables, regardless of the sonority value. These findings add to the phonological knowledge and understanding of the process of short vowel deletion in initial syllables in Najdi Arabic.